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rel=canonical + no index

We have been doing an a/b test of our hp and although we placed a rel=canonical tag on the testing page it is still being indexed. In fact at one point google even had it showing as a sitelink . We have this problem through out our website. My question is:

What is the best practice for duplicate pages?

1. put only a rel= canonical pointing to the "wanted original page"

2. put a rel= canonical (pointing to the wanted original page) and a no index on the duplicate version

I wouldn't mix those signals - it's nearly impossible to tell what's working if you do. If the canonical on the test page isn't working, there may be a couple of issues:

(1) It could just be taking time. Honestly, it's never as fast as you want it to be.

(2) It may be that the test versions got crawled originally, but now aren't being crawled (on the canonical isn't being processed). Check the cache date on the test page.

The big question is how they got crawled in the first place. It's often better to use some sort of cookie-based implementation so that Google never even sees the B version. That's how most of the A/B test implementations work (specifically to avoid this problem).

If it's just a couple of URLs and you can't shake them, you could request manual removal in GWT. That really depends on the scope and URL structure, though.

Interesting - I've very rarely had issues with GWO, but if a new URL was created and someone linked to it, I can see where you might have a problem.

(1) None of these things are absolute, I'm afraid, but typically, yes - a rel=canonical to a different page should keep the first page out of the index.

(2) Usually, but it depends. The problem here may be that Google just isn't crawling the test variant very often, so they may not be processing the rel=canonical yet.

If it's just a couple of pages, I'd give it time - it's probably not an emergency situation. Again, you could just tell Google to remove them in GWT. I think you're doing the right thing with the canonical tags, but it can take Google time to process them the way you want to, in practice.

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